


Act I: The Fugitive

by violethowler



Series: Rise of the Champion [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Just not yet, Pre-Canon, Rebel Leader Shiro, Sort Of, Space Spartacus, There will be Sheith eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violethowler/pseuds/violethowler
Summary: The Champion has lead four successful prison breaks in the last eight months. Each time leveraging his status as the witch Haggar's pet project to save himself from execution as he helped scores of his fellow prisoners flee Central Command and escape to freedom.Today was the fifth prison break. For once, the Galra were prepared for the human's defiance.When Shiro awakens after the breakout, he finds himself free from the captivity of the Galra Empire for the first time since Kerberos. With his dreams haunted by those still left enslaved by the empire, and his fellow escapees looking to him for leadership, the young human returns to Earth to make peace with what he's leaving behind before he resigns himself to spending the rest of his life waging war among the stars.AU Where Shiro escapes from Galra Central Command on his own a few months earlier than canon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone, and welcome to my latest fanfic idea, Rise of the Champion. This was inspired by my VLD meta [The People's Champion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18252917), about how all the evidence we have in canon points to Shiro's "Champion" persona being a proto-Spartacus in space helping his fellow slaves escape to freedom, rather than a ruthless killing machine in service to the empire. My brain helpfully asked "what if Shiro had escaped on his own instead of Ulaz busting him out, and he ended up leading a rebellion of his fellow escapees?" And it spun out from there until I've planned out an entire 5-part series based on this concept. 
> 
> We'll still get Allura, Coran, and the lions eventually. Just not for a while now.  
> And given this fandom, let me just establish in advance that the main pairings are going to be Sheith, Plance, Hunay, and Lotura. I'll probably feature Zethor and Veracxa as side pairings, but those four are the main ones. Fellow Sheith shippers, don't expect any development on that front until at least Act II.

_1…. 2… 3… 4… 5…_

Takashi Shirogane counted the seconds as the sentries walked past. It was one of the only things he could do to pass the time. One of the only luxuries he had in the prisons of the Galra Empire.

It had been roughly eight months by his estimate since he and the Holts had been taken off Kerberos. In that short time, he’d gone from cannon fodder for his captor’s entertainment, to the best gladiator in the ring, to the pet project of the empire’s High Priestess. The latter two had afforded him a measure of comfort, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a slave, forced to fight for his life day after day for the entertainment of Zarkon’s troops.

Still, he supposed it could be worse. The Druids could mess around with people’s minds, so he should count himself lucky his experiences with them had been limited to what amounted to a psychic interrogation.

There was one more benefit to being Haggar’s personal project: it kept his head off the chopping block on days like this.

The metal of his prosthetic arm tapped against the wall as he timed the patrol patterns for the empire’s mechanized foot soldiers. Once his tapping reached the correct count, he sprang into action.

Powering up the energy weapon built into his right hand, he pressed his fingers against the seam where the door to his cell met the wall. He felt the hard metal of the door liquify as his hand melted through the door. Once his fingers had pushed through enough to give him a solid grip, he wrenched the door open.

The sound echoed through the hall, drawing the attention of the other prisoners. Excited whispers carried from one cell to the next like a game of Telephone, the prisoners who had been here the longest explaining to the latest captives what was going on:

The Champion was launching another breakout.

A month or so after Haggar had first taken his right arm and surgically attached this weaponized prosthetic in its place, he’d been thrown into the arena for the first time and left to fight with nothing more than the glowing energy weapon in his hand. He’d killed his opponent in the arena that day, and the only thing that helped him live with the guilt was the realization that his captors had unwittingly given him the perfect tool to facilitate his escape.

But he would never have been able to live with himself if he left his fellow captives behind to suffer. So, he carefully timed the patrol pattern of the sentries assigned to guard the prison block. Then when the time came, he used his new hand to break out of his cell and free as many prisoners as he could before the next pair of sentries arrived to sweep the prison block.

The Galra were so unused to rebellion from the slaves on Central Command that Shiro’s group made it all the way to the launch deck before their escape had been discovered. He had held off the sentries as his fellow escapees scrambled into an escape pod. Eventually, he was overwhelmed, and the other prisoners reluctantly heeded his shouts to escape while they had the chance. As the sentries held him down, he took comfort in the sight of the escape pod vanishing from the command system at hyper speed. He may not have made it out, but at least the others had.

His status as the witch’s pet project was the only reason the Galra didn’t just execute him then and there. It didn’t make the next round of experiments any less painful, but it made the torture easier to bear knowing it kept him alive.

Which came in handy when he staged a second breakout a month later.

That time, he intentionally stayed behind while the other prisoners escaped. Again, Haggar’s experiments marked him as someone to be taken alive. He figured that sooner or later his luck would run out and the High Priestess would decide whatever purpose she wanted him for wasn’t worth all the trouble he was causing. But as long as being her guinea pig kept the Galra from killing him on sight, he would continue to take advantage of that to free as many prisoners as he could from the prisons of Central Command.

Today was his fifth prison break.

He sprinted up and down the corridor, palming his metal arm against the key pads outside each cell to unlock the doors. In his head, he kept count of the number of prisoners he’d freed so far. With all the running he got in the arena and during these attempts, he’d managed to increase the number of cells he could unlock within the time limit each time he broke out.

Within minutes, every cell in the hall was open, and his fellow prisoners had crowded the hall in a single file. Despite the surprise and disbelief on the faces of the newer captives, everyone stayed quiet. He’d done this often enough that those who were still here from previous escape attempts had picked up on the best way to ensure the breakout went off without a hitch.

With a hand signal to the three dozen prisoners in his cell block, he led the way out into the corridors.

For a group this large, they all managed to stay silent as they moved through the labyrinthine halls of Zarkon’s command ship. The eerie green lighting cast a sickly glow over everyone as they crept past empty corridors, moving in clusters to avoid the sentry patrols. They were making good time to the command deck when things went wrong.

Each time Shiro led his fellow prisoners on a bid for freedom, the sentry patrols followed the same routes. The same patterns. The same timing. It was the same every time.

But today was different. The next sentry patrol entered the corridor early. That had never happened before. Not once in the last eight months or so of his captivity. The only possible explanation that Shiro could come up with was that the Galra had finally gotten the hint after his fourth prison break that they needed to take better measures to contain him.

Explanations could wait until after, however. Right now, he had to focus on getting the others to safety.

“Go!” he shouted to the crowd as he charged the sentries in the front and cut them down. As the group jogged through the corridors towards the lifts, it occurred to Shiro that his usual escape route might be compromised. If the sentry patrols had deviated from their established pattern like this, there was no telling what lay ahead. They’d have to take an alternate route and hope that they could make it to the launch deck regardless of his lack of familiarity with the patrol patterns beyond his usual route.

 _Normally I take them up,_ Shiro thought to himself as he caught his breath, desperately praying to any higher power that was listening that the elevator wouldn’t be packed full of sentries. _But what if I take everyone down a few levels before we come up to the escape pod bay?_

Thankfully, the lift was empty of security robots, so Shiro quickly herded everyone inside and pressed the button to carry everyone down a level before he turned to address everyone.

“We’re going to have to make a detour,” he explained. “The patrol pattern for the sentries on that corridor was off from the last four times. There’s not telling if there are ambushes further on the route to the launch bay. Our only option is to go down a few levels and then come up to reach our destination.”

“But what about security on the other levels?” one of the prisoners asked.

“I don’t know,” Shiro answered honestly. “But it’s a risk we’re going to have to take. It’s our only chance to escape to freedom. I promise you that I will do every can to get each and every one of you out of here. All I need you to do is trust me.”

“The Champion has led four successful prison breaks in as many phoebs,” one of the other prisoners, a grey skinned alien named T’sr spoke up. T’sr had been in the initial batch of slaves taken to Central Command alongside Shiro and Matt. Whenever Shiro had pulled his previous breakouts, the alien had insisted that he would only slow the group down. “If anyone can get us out of here, he can.”

Shiro nodded his thanks before the lift doors opened to the lower floors and Shiro lead his fellow captives out onto an observation deck. The hulking, familiar mass of a Galra battle cruiser loomed outside the large reinforced windows. Docking tunnels extended from the warship’s hull to the side of Central Command.

They were halfway down the corridor in the direction of the lift that Shiro knew would take them just outside the launch deck for the escape pods when they ran into another squad of sentries. Before the mechanized foot soldiers could react, Shiro was on them with his prosthetic hand glowing with heat and energy, carving through the robots like they were made of butter. He was just about to take down the last sentry when his shoulder spasmed with the familiar sting of a laser rifle shot.

He turned to find over a dozen sentries charging down the corridor towards their position. For an instant, he froze, his body panicking as memories of the first time he’d been recaptured flashed through his minds. The unfamiliar corridor was replaced by the familiar sight of the escape pod bay. His breathing grew shallower, his heartrate spiking.

Before his panic attack could truly get underway, pain blossomed in his gut, and he looked down to see a circle of red staining his abdomen as a blood seeped from where one of the sentries had just shot him.

A cry went up behind him from his fellow prisoners as his knees buckled. His vision darkened, and all the sound around him was muffled by the blood pounding in his ears. He could vaguely make out the shapes of some of the prisoners charging past him and opening fire on the guards, purple laser fire flying back and forth with stolen rifles.

Shiro could barely keep his eyes open as gravity took hold and he fell forward.

Before he could hit the ground, he felt tour thin arms catch him and turn him around. The last thing he saw was T’sr shouting as the human lost consciousness in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T'sr is that one alien in Season 1 who first referred to Shiro as the Champion and narrated the story of how he injured Matt. I'm going to be wraking my brains to come up with names for some of the major alien characters in this story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't finalized designs for any of the aliens on the crew yet. Some of them are the same ones Pidge and Shiro rescued from Sendak's ship in The Rise of Voltron, but I need to decide which ones are which.

Shiro’s head was pounding as he finally regained consciousness. He was well familiar with the headache as the sedatives used in Haggar’s experiments coursed through his veins.

Groaning, he slowly opened his eyes, only to snap them shut again as the harsh overhead light burned away the last vestiges of sleep. He’d been taken to the witch’s lab then, after the sentries had overwhelmed him.

 _God, I just hope the other prisoners were able to get away,_ he thought to himself. Taking a dep breath, Shiro slowly exhaled as he forced himself to stop worrying about the past. He had done all he could. There was nothing more he could do for this batch of escapees while he was strapped down in the lab. He would need to wait until he was returned to his cell before he could take stock of how many had gotten away.

With nothing better to do, he slowly moved his arms, making a show of testing his restraints in an act of defiance towards his torturers.

To his surprise, only his right arm had been secured in the standard restraints. His legs appeared to have been tied to the bed with a large strip of cloth that felt like it was made from the outer layer of prisoners’ uniforms.

Confused, Shiro lifted his left arm up to shield his eyes from the glare of the lamp, finally opening his eyes to take stock of the room.

His cybernetic arm had been secured to the table with the usual restraints. But unlike previous sessions in Haggar’s lab following his prison breaks, his legs had not been chained to the table with the built-in energy cuffs. Instead, a blanket had been wrapped around the end of the table and tied in what had to be the tightest knot he’d seen in months.

His eyes tracked the trail of discarded of discarded objects littered around the table when the door opened, and he heard the sound of footsteps coming into the room.  

“You’re awake.”

The voice was comforting and gentle, so unlike the harsh, guttural commands of his captors that Shiro instinctively looked up to its source, a grey skinned, humanoid alien with four arms, a smooth, nose-less face, and a large bulb protruding from his forehead. 

“That stunt you pulled with the sentries inspired the younger prisoners,” T’sr continued, still talking as he released the restraint on the young human’s arm and untied the knot securing the man’s legs. “I don’t think we’d have been able to pull this off otherwise.”

Once he realized that it was T’sr and not the high priestess or one of her Druids, Shiro let out a sigh of relief. But he didn’t relax just yet. He still didn’t know what was going on.

“Pull what off?” Shiro asked. “T’sr, what happened? Where are we?”  

“After you were shot, we rallied to take down the sentries.” T’sr began. “Your wound was severe enough to require medical attention, but we could not live with ourselves if we left you to the Galra. So, we commandeered that battleship we passed in order to make use of its med bay.”

Shiro blinked, unsure if he was hearing correctly or if this was just a hallucination.

“You took over a Galra cruiser?” he asked.

“We did,” T’sr answered with a knowing smile. “While we patched you up, Noxor managed to get into the ship’s mainframe and disable any transponders so the Galra cannot track us.”

Shiro couldn’t help the grin that stretched across his face. On their own, his fellow prisoners had managed to hijack a Galra warship and finish their escape from central command. All to save _him._ He had just been doing what he could to help the people around him, but he’d had no idea the other prisoners had valued him that much.

“Sounds like you’ve all been pretty busy,” Shiro commented. “Where are we headed next?”

“We have not chosen our heading yet,” T’sr answered. “We were waiting for you to awaken before we discussed our next move.”

“You were waiting for me?” Shiro was surprised. He had been expecting everyone to want to go home to their families, but he didn’t think his input was necessary to decide on which order to drop everyone off in. 

“None of this would have been possible without you, Shiro,” T’sr replied.  “You gave us hope that we would see our families again. Why wouldn’t we seek your input?”

Shiro felt immensely humbled in that moment. He wasn’t blind to the fact that the other prisoners looked up to him for his efforts to help them all escape. But for them to have this level of trust in him? It was more than a little overwhelming.

“The others are waiting on the bridge when you are ready,” T’sr said, his tone make it clear it was half-meant as a question.

“Let’s not keep them waiting, then” Shiro answered with a grin.

As they walked through the corridors of the warship, the young human couldn’t help but notice that there was a noticeably different atmosphere despite the empire’s standard lighting.  Along the way, T’sr filled Shiro in on what he’d missed while he had been recovering in the med bay. 

A handful of former prisoners with knowledge of interstellar navigation had volunteered to crew the bridge and fly the warship. The rest had dispersed to either take stock of the ship’s officers’ quarters, or to take inventory of the resources and supplies that were available to them.

Shortly before he awoke, a Bitor named Avik had discovered what looked to be a large red mechanical cat suspended within its own force field in the cruiser’s cargo hold. From it’s place of importance, it was clearly valuable, but from the way T’sr described it, Shiro didn’t think it was Galra technology. It didn’t sound like it fit with the empire’s aesthetic.

Finally, they emerged onto the bridge to find three former prisoners stationed at different monitors around the room. A field of stars glimmered beyond the viewport, as it finally began to sink in that Shiro was free from the empire’s prisons at last.  

One of the escapees manning the helm turned and noticed him walk onto the bridge. A grin stretched across her face.

“Captain on deck!”  She shouted.

Shiro froze, unsure if he had heard her correctly. _Maybe she’s talking about T’sr?_ he wondered. A quick glance at his companion confirmed that no, he had heard the helmswoman correctly. He opened his mouth to ask when this happened, to protest being given the position, but the words wouldn’t come out. His mouth just mechanically flapped open and closed as Shiro struggled to find the words.

“We put it to a vote,” another member of the bridge crew explained. “The decision was unanimous. You were the one who kept risking your life to get people to freedom. We had all given up hope in Zarkon’s prisons, but you were what kept us going.”

“We saw you lead the way to freedom, only to let the others go on ahead while you stayed behind to help more of us escape,” another went on. “We know you’ll want to save more people, and if you’re going to try to take down the Galra empire yourself, we will follow you wherever you need us to.”

Shiro took a deep breath, stunned at the level of trust and faith these people had in him. He hadn’t been good enough to protect his crew on Kerberos, and now thirty-six aliens – who were in all likelihood just as damaged and traumatized as he was – thought _he_ should be their leader? If he weren’t in public he’d laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

 _If only Keith were here,_ he thought to himself. _At least I could be open about things with him. I don’t know if I can carry the crew’s morale on my shoulders all by myself._

Forcing those thoughts aside, he turned his attention to the situation at hand. Even if everyone on the ship was committed to waging a guerilla war against the Galra empire, they needed to rest first. They were fresh from a prison break and he remembered a lot of them being malnourished in the cells.

“Our first order of business is to get some fresh air,” he finally said. “I feel like we could all use a chance to recover before we plan our next move.”  

“Where to, sir?” the helmswoman asked. Shiro gave the decision some thoughts for a moment. His mind had already provided a destination, but he was busy trying to come up with a way to justify it that weren’t obviously to do homesickness. Everyone here had been taken from their home planets. None of them had any idea when they’d see their friends and families again. What right did he have to prioritize Earth over anyone else’s planet?

He knew it was selfish of him, but with his disease, he didn’t know how long he had left. And if he was going to spend the rest of his short life fighting a war in a different galaxy, he wanted to have one last chance to say goodbye to his home.

“Check the navigation data and see if you can find System X9Y on the star charts.” He finally told her. “I remember the Galra using that designation for my home system. They haven’t invaded yet or we’d have seen more humans in the arena. So, it’s a good place to lie low for a day or two until we can regroup.” 

“Right away, Captain!” she exclaimed, a cheer echoing around the bridge as the motely collection of aliens dispersed to continue taking inventory of the ship. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bitor is a species namedropped in Season 2 when the mice are playing charades with Allura, and based on the mice miming, fanon has declared it as the name of Slav's species.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait. Between graduation and job hunting I just haven't had the energy for my fanfics.

Shiro felt the homesickness like a fire raging beneath his skin that grew hotter as they streaked past the moon towards Earth. He had given up on ever seeing his home planet again, but now that he was seeing it again for the first time, all of the walls he’d built up had crumbled, and let the aching urge to go home wash over him like the tide.

They had parked their stolen cruiser on the far side of Jupiter, out of range of the Garrison’s probes. A handful of his new crew members had volunteered to stay behind and keep the battleship operational in case the Galra followed them. In the meantime, the rest of them had piled into one of the escape pods and set a course for Earth.

He could scarcely wrap his head around the concept that he’d been put in charge. The role of a pilot at the Garrison was to get the entire group to and from their destination safely, but Commander Holt had still been the one calling the shots on the Kerberos mission. It wasn’t as if Shiro had never expected to take on a leadership role in his life. Iverson had mentored him for years, to the point where the Garrison’s rumor mill had an ongoing betting pool over when Shiro would be picked as the Commander’s successor. But that was a whole different ball game from several dozen traumatized relative strangers asking someone just as much of a mess on the inside as they were to be the voice of reason. 

But hadn't that been exactly what he'd done in the arena? Constantly defying their captors so that others could make it to freedom? Making himself responsible for their well being as he staged breakout after breakout? In hindsight, it wasn't all that surprising, though it didn't make it any less humbling. 

Their approach into Earth’s atmosphere was slow and careful. They came from behind the moon and descended through the atmosphere like a shooting star, keeping their pace steady to avoid detection from Earth’s satellites. The escape pod landed in the desert outside the Garrison, keeping the lights low and the engines idling in case they were spotted. While the Garrison had been an important part of Shiro’s life and he trusted his friends and colleagues there, he wasn’t in the mood to delay his return to the stars for quarantine.

An hour after landing with no response from the Garrison, they exited the ship and stepped out into the night.

The cold air of the desert was a welcome change from the stale air of the empire’s prison cells. Shiro tired – and failed – to keep the tears from falling as he stared up at familiar constellations for the first time in almost a year.

It was funny, he thought, how as a child he used to look up at the night sky with wonder and awe, but now all he could muster was dread as he thought of the war raging beyond the Milky Way.

For a brief moment, he thought of reporting to the Garrison and telling them that he was alive. Of readying Earth’s defenses while he led a rescue mission into Galra-controlled space to rescue Matt and Commander Holt.

But the moment quickly passed, and the bitter, cynical reality reasserted itself. He had a pretty good idea how Admiral Sanda would react. She would at least be open to preparing Earth’s defenses, but she was also likely to insist on keeping him under house arrest at the Garrison and hiding his survival from the world. And any plans for a rescue mission would be vetoed as soon as they reached her desk.

And that was without going into what she could do to his fellow prisoners. Some of these people hadn’t seen their families in decades. What right did he have to force them to spend the rest of their lives on another planet even after escaping from the clutches of the empire?

He shook his head, forcing thoughts of the Garrison from his mind. He might have considered sneaking in to say goodbye to Adam if he was alone, but he wasn’t going to leave everyone alone on the ship. Regardless of his own feelings about it, these people had chosen him to lead them, and he took that responsibility seriously.

A short distance away was a small shack out in the desert. Shiro couldn’t help sighing as he imagined the chance to finally take a shower. The prisoners were hosed down regularly to keep the cells from smelling of unwashed bodies, but it had been over a week since then, and after the sweat and exertion of the breakout, Shiro was desperate to take an actual shower. 

Besides, he wasn’t going to make his crew-mates sleep outdoors. It would be a little cramped in there, but he figured at least tonight they would have actual beds instead of the hard floors of their prison cells.

“I’ll go see if anyone’s home,” he whispered to the crew before he stepped off the ship. Ducking low, he crept towards the front door of the shack.

When loudly knocking on the door produced no response, he moved around the perimeter of the house in search of an open window.

Once he found one, he peeked over the ledge and found the inside of the one-room shack covered with a thin layer of dust. Satisfied that the place appeared to be abandoned for the time being, he gestured for everyone to join him against the wall.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” he said. “I think we could all use a chance to get cleaned up before we get moving, but the front door’s locked so we have to go in through the window.” He positioned himself below the window and, one by one, helped the others inside the shack.

Once inside, everyone spread out as much as the small space allowed. T’sr set the bag of emergency supplies they’d brought from the ship down on the table in the middle of the room. Shiro unlocked the front door and showed everyone where he’d found the bathroom, but after taking turns to quickly relieve themselves and bathe, they all slowly congregated back inside the shack for some sleep. It had been less than 24 hours since his escape, but despite his exhaustion, Shiro took the first watch, re-locking the shack’s front door before taking his spot.     

As the aliens crowded around the shack’s one room, Shiro found that something about the shack was familiar to him. He couldn’t put his finger on why, or what it was, but he felt as if he _should_ know this place. He wracked his brain for why, but his memories of life before his capture were still clouded by the haze of barely contained panic that had been looming over him like fog ever since his escape.

 _I’ll probably remember in the morning,_ he thought to himself as he finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

 

A few hours later, everyone was jolted from slumber as the roar of a hoverbike shattering the calm silence of the night. The roar of the bike’s engine built to a thundering crescendo as it grew closer to the shack. The volume began to drop to a steady rumble just outside the door, the sound looping for about a minute before it abruptly cut off.

Shiro quickly realized that the place wasn’t as vacant as he first thought. Apparently, someone _did_ live here, and Shiro wasn’t going to take chances with the safety of his crew.

Shiro quietly gestured for his alien colleagues to flee out the windows over the couch, listening frantically for the sound of the shack’s occupant unlocking the door. He winced on reflex with every creak of the ragged sofa as his crew members clambered up and out the windows. Thankfully, the hoverbike driver didn’t appear to notice the noise.

As the last of his crew slipped outside, Shiro heard the sound of a key being inserted into the lock on the door. He instinctively turned to climb out himself, but in his haste to not get caught, he accidentally kicked his foot against the cinder blocks supporting the table.

Despite everything he’d suffered in the arena, something about the completely ordinary pain of slamming his foot against something hard managed to force a cry of pain from Shiro’s mouth. All thought of stealth and tactical necessity forgotten, he brought his foot up and ran his hands over his throbbing toes through the thin material of his shoe in a futile effort to ease the pain, hopping on one leg and drawing even more attention to himself.

 _At least whoever lives here will be too focused on me to suspect I wasn’t here alone,_ Shiro thought, closing his eyes as the pain pulsed upwards from his toes. _I can just pass myself off as a lost hiker looking for food._

“DON’T MOVE!” The biker yelled as the front door burst open. Shiro opened his eyes and whatever excuses he would have made to appease the shack’s owner died in his throat when he laid eyes on the person who lived here, just as shocked to see Shiro standing there as Shiro was to see him. _Now I remember why this shack looked so familiar,_ he thought to himself.

“Hey, Keith,” Shiro greeted weakly, suddenly at a loss for words, with too many things he wanted to say and not enough words to express them. “It’s been a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, folks. Keith has arrived. Next chapter is going to be exclusively from his POV so expect a _lot_ of reunion feels.


End file.
